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Sri Lankan cricket - competitive but not yet complete

Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara - and Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas who've retired - have been great cricketers but the fact that they haven't been able to win a Test for their country in India, Australia and South Africa in their

Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara - and Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas who've retired - have been great cricketers but the fact that they haven't been able to win a Test for their country in India, Australia and South Africa in their career thus far will count against them, says Osman Samiuddin in The National.

Both were respected captains, Jayawardene intuitive, Sangakkara calculating. And it is their voices, articulate and reasoned, that are always sought out from the country.

But sometimes too much has been made of their eloquence.

It has allowed their inability to right this wrong to slip by unnoticed. Their primary task, after all, is to lead or help their side win Tests, something they - and Murali, Ranatunga, Vaas, De Silva and all the others - have failed to do in the toughest places Test cricket takes you to.